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Thursday, Apr. 18, 2024

9:41pm EDT

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Name This Novel Contest

by SherrasQ

Rated: E · In & Out · Contest · #1981773

This is a contest to name a novel

This is a contest to name a novel based on a synopsis paragraph. You may ask me any questions you'd like and you may borrow from any of the other suggestions. This is the cover image:

** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **

Short Synopsis: Pala and her team of rangers escort a science mission to what they've been told is an uninhabited planet. Governmental insurgents release a biological agent and the rangers must stop them before the planet and everything on it dies.

Long Synopsis: Palamourah Isberg, an Interplanetary Peace Coalition marshal, has been assigned escort duty to a group of scientists as they explore the allegedly uninhabited planet RK-197, or “Colossus” as her men call it. Her husband, one of her rangers and a scientist are attacked and killed by one of their own remote controlled gunnery spheres.

Reeling from the loss of her husband, Pala gathers her remaining team, removing all tracking devices. They march fast and hard, in a round-about path back to their base camp, while Pala and her second, Quade, try to work out who attacked and why. As they march, a rainstorm catches them, forcing them to seek refuge beneath a ledge. When the storm clears, Pala finds another remote controlled gunnery sphere waiting to attack. It has followed a tracking device planted in a gift to Pala from her husband.

Trgyl, a member of the alleged non-existent dominant indigenous species has witnessed both attacks while out hunting. He is hungry, but hasn’t eaten. He has followed Pala and her team instead. He now returns to his barrio.

Pala and her men return to Base Camp. No one is alive there. Immediately, Pala sends her men out again to assist any survivors of her three other crews, keeping the scientists with her in Base Camp. She also contacts the other seven Base Camps, rallying their survivors to her. After her men leave, she discovers the scientist, Makel, sneaking into camp. When he refuses to answer any questions, she takes him prisoner.

Less than one-fourth of the entire mission has survived. Her husband’s uncle, Stastny, challenges Pala’s authority to lead the mission, but is forced to remove his claims. He begins to build his own faction within the group.

The people in Trgyl’s barrio have begun to get sick and die, including his mate and first born. He realizes the new creatures must also be in trouble and perhaps this has something to do with the attacks.

A vial is found in Makel’s tent during a search in private tents for pain reducing drugs, legal or illegal. In fear, Makel confesses to the real mission: the Miner’s Union (which Stastny represents) and Earth Defense are testing a new biological weapon that bonds into the alien bloodstream and kills the entire population.

Everyone available is put to work burning the vegetation where the men have traveled. Pala’s men begin to die from the virus as it mutates. Scientists rush to find an anti-toxin, and she discovers her husband was instrumental in this secret mission. He intended her to be the target of the initial sphere attack, because he knew she would try to stop the mission if she found out about it.

Trgyl makes contact and is tested to see why he isn’t sick. The answer is in the newly re-growing lichen that he has been eating. Before the anti-toxin can be finished, one of the scientists, as he dies, warns Pala not to allow anyone to return to Earth because of the danger of continued mutation.

Pala gets ill, exhibiting symptoms of the virus. When she collapses, Quade rushes her back to Base Camp where they give her an anti-toxin that is still in experimental stages. As she and the other ill men heal, Pala is unable to convince Stastny of the dangers of the virus mutating again, upon reaching Earth’s environment. As his ships leave to meet with the transport, Pala and those loyal to her destroy Stastny’s ship, as well as all others who seek to return to Earth. Pala and her men vow retribution if anyone breaks their quarantine. They return to Colossus to help Trgyl begin healing the planet.

The prize: 50,000 GPS. These can be split between two or more entrants if I decide to combine entries.

This contest is now closed. The winner is poetnb.

Yellow Rose says "Beneath the Ledge of Betrayal"